About a year ago I started a new exercise regime which is based on using an elliptical machine as many days a week as I can tolerate (currently I do three on, one off). Shortly afterwards, I set myself a goal of burning 1,000 calories in 40 minutes.

Why 40 minutes? Because my gym limits machine time to 20 minutes “when all the machines are busy”…and I figured 40 minutes was about as far as I could push the limit :). The 1,000 calorie goal was set very scientifically: it’s a Big Round Number. Besides, when I started out it was pretty far away from what I was doing.

Today I managed to do 990 calories in 40 minutes. Couldn’t quite hit the goal, despite a big effort. But the “end” is clearly in sight, and it’ll come one of these days.

And that’s today’s narcissistic update :).